


Confusing Conversations.

by Benwilson



Series: Miles Brown VS The Puckerbooty and Puppyboy [2]
Category: Rambling Wrecks
Genre: And Puckerman booty, F/M, Fanfiction Twice Removed, M/M, Miles Brown loves all the people, Pre-Slash, Story of Three Boys, and Lynn lips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benwilson/pseuds/Benwilson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles is ignoring Jake. He's ignoring him so much that Jake is all he can think about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confusing Conversations.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, written for Ravingliberal and Patchfire! Beta'd by david_of_oz. 
> 
> Yeah. I can't believe it either. -enthusiastic bouncing-

Miles Brown liked to think that he was mature enough to let things go. He'd given up his own agency to the Gods of Chance, via a plastic bottle, and that should be that. He’d given it his best shot, and now he was going to drop the idea of tapping that ass, and move on to greener pastures.

 

It would help if Casey would stop dragging him to Glee Club things.

 

"They were all so supportive of us last year, Miles! We need to support them!" He'd say as he tugged Miles through the halls towards the Choir room.

 

Miles would respond with some variation of "Cherry, you get that these aren't the same people, right." But somehow always ended up sitting with Casey watching people making meaningful faces at one another, and singing songs about their current emotional state. And Casey would always clap enthusiastically, leaving Miles feeling like an ass if he didn't join in.

 

And there was Jake. Just Jake. Jake of the elusive nature, who nobody would discuss with Miles. Nearest he got was Taylor looking him dead in the eye and telling him he would be safer if he didn't go anywhere near that ball of mess.

 

So, instead, Miles was throwing himself into the three things that meant he wouldn't have to deal with Jake – working at his parents store, PFLAG meetings and football. It seemed like Jake would happily sit and watch any of the girls sporting events, but football was a step too far. Which was a pretty big hint all on its own.

 

"Hey, Brown!" Coach Beiste yelled as he tried to push another lap of his sprint to waste time. "Come over here a sec."

 

He paused before loping towards Coach Beiste, where she was stood with her ever present clipboard. "Yeah, Coach?"

 

She looked uncomfortable for a moment, as though she wasn't sure how to say what she wanted to say. "You… uh… you doing okay?"

 

"Yeah?" Miles frowned, "Why?"

 

"I just… look, I get that I rode everyone a little hard at the start of the year about the team, but you need to rest some, too, you hear?" Coach Beiste nodded, but her eyes glanced away from Miles to one of the other boys who was leaving the field. Miles quickly glanced over, picking out the number for future reference. "Casey said you were having some trouble with a relationship?"

 

"Oh, god, no. Coach, I'm sorry but no." Miles held up his hands in surrender. "I don't need teachers interfering. Hell I didn't need 90% of people interfering in this… and what did Cherry even say?"

 

" _Casey_ ,” She stressed the name a little, and Miles dulled the urge to roll his eyes. “just… mentioned that you'd been a little caught up with one of the new students." Coach Beiste shrugged. "I didn't mean to pry, he just… he doesn't talk about much, so I thought this must be important."

 

Miles bit back the thing he wanted to say, that Casey was probably just trying to say something that wouldn't offend Beiste or Monty. "Well… thanks I guess, but it ain't nothing about a relationship. Don't worry yourself."  She’d never been the type to get involved in students relationship’s before... bar the whole Shep/Cherry mess.

 

"Alright." Coach Beiste nodded sharply, checking her clipboard. "How's PFLAG going this year?"

 

"Fine." Miles awkwardly shifted his weight, resisting the urge to peek at the clipboard. Some kid had done it last week, and Coach Beiste looked like she wanted to hit him with it. Did she have conversation prompts, or something on there? And why had she pulled _him_ aside specifically?

 

"Good. Good. So… you go get cleaned up. And, remember that if you hear anything in there, or anywhere, you can come to me. Right?"

 

"Yeah… Sure." Miles said backing away slowly, as she moved back to her clipboard.

 

Weird.

 

***

 

It made more sense at the next team practice, when Coach Beiste made a point to remind people of the inclusivity of team sports, and the vengeful wrath she would rain down on anybody stupid enough to make homophobic remarks in her changing room.

 

There was someone gay on the team, and Miles was 200% sure he knew who it was.

 

So – what should he do?

 

Resist his natural urge to prod the issue until it exploded violently.

 

It was a losing battle. So now his list of things he could be putting energy into had devolved to PFLAG and flower arranging.

 

"Miles, why are you sitting upside down on the couch?" Alicia sighed as she dropped onto the couch next to him, grabbing the remote.

 

"Trying to work out when my life got so damn gay."

 

Alicia shook her head quietly. "Wanna talk about it?"

 

"No."

 

"Fine." She shrugged, flicking on a show that Miles knew that she knew he hated.

 

"Alica…"

 

"Hey, I'm not forcing you to watch it." She grinned, putting the remote out of his reach.

 

"I was here first!"

 

"With your big gay panic?"

 

"I ain't… You make me want to kill people."

 

"That's sweet. Want to talk about it?"

 

"You can't make me talk about stuff!"

 

"No, I can't make Casey talk about stuff. You? You're barely a warm up."

 

Miles grit his teeth, taking a deep breath. "You're not going to win."

 

"I already won, you just haven't realised yet."

 

"…"

 

"…"

 

"……"

 

"…"

 

"Fine!" Miles grunted, twisting his body so he was upright again. "Okay, so there's the whole Jake thing, and that kid just seems to be everywhere!"

 

"Has he done something?" Alicia asked, glancing at Miles, her hand twitching for her phone. "Do I have to kill him."

 

"What? No. I haven't spoken to him. I… there was this whole thing with a bottle." Miles waved it off. "Anyway, I kind of decided that if I'm not going to tap that, I need to forget about him."

 

"Good plan."

 

"But he's everywhere! So, I started to focus on football, because that's completely out of that guys comfort zone. But Coach Beiste's asking me if everything's okay, because Cherry's been blabbing about Jake, and apparently there's another gay guy on the team. I mean, statistically— Never mind. Anyway, I don't want to get wrapped up in that. So I'm kind of… stuck with focusing on PFLAG or the shop."

 

"Wow… that's… yeah." Alicia rolled her eyes. "Want a trip to Dayton?"

 

"That is so unhelpful, I'm starting to wonder if you're adopted." Grumbling he made a weak grab for the remote as somebody started to massacre 'My Heart Will Go On', on the TV.

 

"No, you were adopted."

 

Miles let out a low groan, bashing his head back softly. "I never thought there'd be a day where I missed Puckerman and Hummel. At least when they were around the focus was on their stuff, or Casey’s. Now I have to think about stuff!"

 

Alicia froze, fighting to suppress a grin. "You wish there was a Puckerman around?"

 

"…Well, I guess. If there were two, I could let Hummel keep one with him, and Lima gets one to be hilariously distracting and threatening."

 

"Oh, one day, you are going to regret saying that." Alicia snickered standing up. "Here, watch whatever you want."

 

"What are you laughing at? Alicia! Hey! Get back here!"

 

***

 

"Did you hear?"

 

"No, what?"

 

"Coach Beiste dragged two of the newbies to her office today for homophobic language. One of them got benched for a week, the other’s being dragged to the meeting today."

 

"Huh. Wonder how Casey and Taylor are going to handle that."

 

Miles sat, wishing that beating your head against the table was a more accepted form of reacting to stuff, because this? This took the cake. This took the cake, a small buffet table, and then ordered 13 pizzas.

 

"Do you think the guy'll cause trouble?" Rick asked, shifting uncomfortably. "I mean, Taylor's awesome, but I don't think people think of him as threatening, without actually seeing him being threatening. And Casey… yeah. So… do you think I need to be threatening."

 

"Foots, I…" Miles bit down his words hard, "Nobody needs to be threatening okay? Hudson got to act like that because most of the time he was a big teddy bear."

 

"Alright… but if he says something, I'm gonna go all… bodyguard on his ass, alright? Nobody should mess this up for Taylor and Case."

 

"I'm sure you'll try, Foots." Miles snorted, rolling his eyes.

 

"Hey, you want to tell me what crawled up your ass, or what?" Rick snapped, turning to Miles. "’Cause all day you been pissy, and now I'm having to have a serious conversation about what we do if this guy outs people in this room who don't want to be out, and you're acting like I'm a kid who don't know shit. So cut the attitude, alright!"

 

There's an awkward silence in the PFLAG room, and then a high pitched noise that seems to come from Casey before he turns to Taylor and starts talking at such a high-pitched, loud and breakneck speed, that the poor guy just had to nod along.

 

"I ain't got an attitude."

 

"Bull. Crap."

 

Miles stared at Rick for a long moment, checking that the conversations had restarted around them. "You know what? Fine. You wanna talk about this, Rickenbacker. All the gory details, huh?"

 

Rick paled a little, but set his jaw and nodded once, the motion tight. "If that's what it takes."

 

"Fine. I've fucked a lotta guys. Been fucked by just as many probably. How we doing so far?"

 

"Fine." He muttered through gritted teeth, and any other time, Miles would have been happily surprised at how much Rick was putting into making sure he was okay. But right now, he was venting.

 

"Good. So, yeah. I'm a hit and run guy. Love ’em and leave ’em. Three guys I've had my eye on that I haven't got. One of them moved away, one of them I know I can't touch, and the third just shows up everywhere, all the time, and leaves me with the weirdest boner."

 

"…Right." Rick said, less tense than before but still obviously uncomfortable.

 

"And now, Coach is bringing in a kid from the Football team, who… I'm pretty sure she's gonna want us to befriend, and guess what? I don't want to right now! I want to make sure Cherry is eating right and sleeping right so Shep doesn't come back and shove my head through the driveway."

 

Rick nodded again, and then just paused, as if digesting the information. "Okay, first off, more than I ever wanted to know about your sex life. Ever."

 

"Noted."

 

"Second, dude, you're a guy! If you didn't get weird erections around people, it'd be weird! And last, here's an idea. The guy probably seems to be everywhere, because you keep looking for him! You ain't telling me that you haven't started glancing around in the hallways to check he ain't there. Do you know how you get over that?"

 

Miles sighed, rolling his eyes. "Lose myself in a routine."

 

"What? No! That's… do new things. Make new friends! Do things that you don't associate with a guy you haven't had a single conversation with, but you have the strangest boner for."

 

He wanted to argue, but… for once, Rickenbacker wasn't being stupid. Still, he had to protect his manhood. "It’s not like I'm sat around, mooning over the guy, okay? He's just… got a fine ass."

 

"And that's great. Now, man up and come with me." Rick rolled his eyes grabbing Miles and dragging him out of his seat. "And… you know, be grateful I ain't calling Hummel and telling him you basically outed someone."

 

"I didn't out anyone!"

 

"Please. Guy on the football team, who coach wants you to be friends with? He's gotta be something, otherwise she'd just let him be."

 

"You're gonna have to stop being so insightful, Foots, or I'm gonna start expecting stuff."

 

"It'll probably wear off in five minutes."

 

Miles caught his step as they reached the door. "Where are we going?"

 

"We're introducing ourselves to this new guy." Rick nodded to himself, as though it was a great idea. "Get more support on the football team and all that, yeah?"

 

Miles was about to argue that they'd look crazy, standing in the hallway, but Rick had already dragged him out of the door, and nearly face first into Coach Beiste. There was an awkward moment, when Miles was completely off balance, and the Coach looked to be about the same. Rick on the other hand didn't look all that concerned, smiling real wide and offering his hand to the guy who had been walking with Coach Beiste.

 

"Hey, I'm Rick."

 

"Ryder." The guy said shaking the hand quickly, awkwardly glancing at Coach Beiste. "We're on the football team together, yeah?"

 

Miles glanced over the guy, and then tilted his head to the side as he took in this new information. "Huh."

 

"Huh?" Ryder repeated, glancing at Miles.

 

"Just… huh." Miles made a vague gesture, stepping out of the way of the door. "Hey, Coach. Why don't you let us keep an eye on him, huh?"

 

Coach Beiste gave Miles a grateful look but then paused again. "Maybe we should all keep an eye on him," she offered, "this is supposed to be a punishment."

 

"What'd you do dude?" Rick asked, frowning a little.

 

"I didn't… I didn't mean it!" Ryder muttered quickly, looking away, "There was just a guy… We were just talking, you know?"

 

"Just talking's how it starts. Ain't nothing wrong with being gay Lynn." Coach Beiste said, so pointedly that Miles had to resist the urge to wince.

 

"No, I totally know that! We were just… He said the weather was gay, and I said he was… never mind." Ryder sighed, shaking his head softly. "So, this is the PFLAG group?"

 

"Yeah, dude, you should come in!" Rick grinned, opening the door. "I think we got soup today. That's always good."

 

Miles watched as Rick led Ryder inside and then turned to Coach Beiste. "You think there's something up with him?"

 

"Huh?" Coach Beiste said, blinking quickly. "What? No. I just thought… you know bullying is spread through ignorance and…"

 

"I kind of thought it was Phil and Bobby. They're always together…" Miles mused out loud, "And you kept eyeing them when you were talking to me, but… yeah, I just want to say, me and Foots'll keep an eye on him."

 

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Beiste denied quickly, but Rick could see the smile twitching at her lips. "But… If there were some conspiracy, I'd be happy as a hippo in a hammock that you're looking out for the boy, hear? He's a loner, and I don't like loners on my team."

 

"Got it, Coach." Miles grinned, opening the door. "After you?"

 

"Hey, just… quickly." Coach Beiste stopped, her half smile gone. "Keep an eye on the other two you mentioned, alright? And keep them away from Casey."

 

"This a Coach thing?"

 

"Guardian thing. They're good players, but… something about them rubs me the wrong way."

 

Miles nodded slowly, "Cherry's safe with me, Coach."

 


End file.
